


Five-Stretch Eve

by beetle



Category: Inception (2010), RocknRolla (2008)
Genre: M/M, crossover AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this inception_kink prompt: "Arthur takes the fall for a job gone wrong and is handed down a two year prison stretch. The night before he's locked up, he confesses that he's always had a thing for Cobb. Cue Dom awkwardly (but in a heartfelt way, because he cares, damn it) trying to make Arthur's last night one to remember. Your choice whether or not Arthur actually ends up going to prison in the end. (Why, yes, this is shamelessly stolen from RocknRolla, how could you tell? What can I say---the OneTwo/Handsome Bob thing did not work out the way I wanted it to.)"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five-Stretch Eve

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own neither fandom, so don’t sue.  
> Notes: Vague spoilers and a twist.

  
  
“Come on, Arty-boy,” Dom says, turning the Land Rover onto Lex and 35th. There’s more traffic than is usual for this time of night, and  _to_ night, of all nights, they don’t need to be held up. “Cheer up.”  
  
“What the hell’ve I got to cheer up about, Dom?” Dom can feel Art’s gaze on him, helpless and hopeless. “I'll be doin’ a five-stretch in an eight-by, this time tomorrow night.”  
  
“Art, that's tomorrow night, okay? So tonight is party-time,” Dom says with the satisfaction of a man whose plan has come together  _perfectly_  . . . though it covers the guilt of a man who’s letting his best friend swing for a crime he didn’t commit. “And have we got a party planned for  _you_ , my fine friend! We’ve got a couple of grams of Colombian marching power and  _four_  strippers—we’ve got a  _very_  grateful Ariadne—not to mention the Harris twins: probably the most expensive escort girls ever to have escorted. And they’ve been greased down just for you!”  
  
Dom quickly switches lanes when there’s suddenly an opening, then regrets it when traffic not only gridlocks in the new lane, but opens up in the one he just left. He swears. At this rate, they’ll  _never_  get to the pub.  
  
“Wow. Sounds like good times for the Art-ski,” Art says listlessly, leaning back in the passenger-seat and closing his eyes. He rubs his temples like a man with an impending migraine and Dom deflates.  
  
“Well, I see that cheered you up real good,” he notes drily. Art loosens his silk tie and unbuttons the top button of his silk shirt with a sigh. Without the obstruction of tie and collar, his neck is long and slender—too fragile looking.  
  
“Look, it's not that I'm not grateful—“  
  
“Hey, who’s doing the five-stretch for whom?” Dom puts his hand on Art’s shoulder and squeezes firmly, momentarily dismayed by the sharp bones wrapped in lean muscle just under his hand. Art’s lost weight since this whole mess began, but Dom’d had no idea just how much.  
  
It’s driven home again just how cowardly he’s been—him and the Bunch—letting Art take the fall for them.  
  
Prison is for rabid bruisers, not for guys like Art—guys who buy their moms a fancy house with their first big score, then put their siblings through college with their second. “Arty,  _I’m_  the one who’s gotta be grateful, here. And I am. So’s the team, and that’s why we’re throwing you the send-off to beggar all send-offs.”  
  
Art almost smiles, his lips twitching a bit. “Okay, then, it’s not that I’m not  _excited_  about my party, it's just. . . .”  
  
Dom squeezes again, until Art looks at him with hooded, unreadable eyes. “What? It's just what? Tell me.”  
  
Shaking his head  _no_  Art looks out the passenger-side window. The city rolls by them, bright and impressive at night. “You wouldn't understand, Dom.”  
  
“That’s an unfair thing to say.” Dom takes his hand away, then huffs out an impatient breath. “Come on, Arty-boy. You know I'd understand anything coming from you.”  
  
Art grunts dismissively. “Would you, now?”  
  
“Of course! You're my best friend—the best man at my wedding  _and_  my kids’ godfather. You’re the man who’s doing  _five-fucking-years_  for me and the Wild Bunch.” Dom shakes his head, still more than a little awed and humbled by such a gift. But Art is nothing if not loyal and brave. The finest person Dom’s ever met, truth be told. And that, alone, means that there’s nothing Art could tell him that would ever affect their friendship.  
  
Art gives him another hooded gaze that breaks at the last moment—turns miserable and vulnerable before he looks out the window again, a muscle at his jaw clenched tight. ”Thing is,” he begins, “Thing is, I don’t want the blow, or the strippers, or the damn Harris twins.”  
  
Well. That’s a first. The Harris twins are Art’s favorite working ladies, or Dom’s last name isn’t _Cobb_. But then again, staring down the barrel of a five-stretch’d be enough to make any man incapable or uninterested in getting it up. Even for the lovely, well-endowed Harris twins. “Okay. Alright. We can shoo the girls—excepting Ariadne—and just drink and bullshit all night—whatever you want, Arty. Whatever.”  
  
No reply, and the silence draws out so long and so charged that Dom looks over to find an intense stare directed at him. Art’s eyes seem even darker than usual and uncomfortably intent.  
  
“I want you, Dom,” he says hoarsely. Dom’s brow furrows.  
  
“Want me to what?”  
  
For a moment, Art simply gazes at him as if he’s being particularly dense. Then he leans closer, putting his hand on Dom’s knee then sliding it up to his thigh and squeezing. “I want.  _You_.”  
  
“The  _fuck_!” Dom jams on the breaks hard, causing the drivers behind him to do the same, honking and swearing out their windows. Traffic around them parts like the Red Sea, only much, much slower.  
  
“You—you—that’s not possible!“ Dom glares at Art, who removes his hand and shrinks back in his seat. “I know all your girlfriends—all of them! Or should I say your  _beards_? That’s the term, isn’t it?”  
  
Art shrinks some more, putting a hand over his eyes. “I told you, you wouldn't understand, and you don’t,” he says, his voice tight with strain. Dom swears and looks out his window. He’d jump out of the car if he wasn’t in danger of getting mowed down by all the angry drivers having to go around the Land Rover. As it is, his legs and arms are itching with the urge to pace and gesture and  _move_.  
  
But he’s trapped. Trapped in his car with his best friend, who just so happens to want—  
  
“Jesus, Art, all these years of friendship, and you’re a—you're a fucking fairy, now?”  
  
“Not  _just now_ , Dom. Always been.” Art leans against the door, hand still covering his eyes. He looks small and young. Far too breakable, and Dom realizes that’s what he’s doing. Breaking Art into little pieces. But nevertheless he’s angry with his  _best friend_  for keeping a secret this huge.  
  
He’s angry that Art took the fall for him, and for the team,  
  
He’s angry that he  _let_  Art take the fall for him and for the team.  
  
He’s angry that he got Art into the Life, in the first place. That he took a hungry, desperate young man from his impoverished, but decent family, and his shitty community college world, and turned him into an unrepentant criminal.  
  
Dom even wonders if he and Art would’ve come this far if he’d known that the lanky kid with the ratty, hand-me-down clothes and hero-worship bright in his eyes was a fucking  _queer_. . . .  
  
“Fuck, you're Handsome Art!” he exclaims, unable to control the unhappy creeching in his voice. “ _You're_  Arthur Steiner, the smooth criminal all the men wanna be and all the women wanna be with!  _You’re_  the badass, GQ motherfucker with more suits than any eight decks of cards, and more guns than the NRA!  _You’re_  the guy who  _always_  gets the  _girl. The girl_!  _That_ 's who you are! Do you hear me, Art?”  
  
Art laughs quietly, mirthlessly. “Fucking Bayonne hears you, Dom. But that’s not who I am. Not really. It’s just who you need me to be.”  
  
“I mean, I've shared showers with you, man!” Dom rants, closing his eyes and shuddering. “You've seen my fucking dick!”  
  
”See? I told you!” Art explodes, punching the glove box, which rebounds opens with a  _sprong-ong-ong_. “I fucking  _told_  you you wouldn’t understand. I should have just kept my mouth shut.”  
  
“Right! You  _should’ve_  kept your mouth shut!” Dom glares out his window at traffic, ignoring the continued honking of any car unlucky enough to switch into their lane. Other drivers give him the finger as they inch by. “You should've just gone and done the strippers and whores, like _Handsome Art_  would've done. You should’ve fucking  _drowned_  the cat instead of letting it out of the bag! But no, not you. Not  _Fag-Art_!”  
  
Following this, there’s silence in the car once more. A long, tense,  _painful_  silence, in which Dom feels very keenly the impact of his words, and regrets them almost immediately.  
  
“Listen, Art—“  
  
“No, fuck you, Dominic Cobb,” Art says softly, without any inflection whatsoever. He only ever uses that tone when he’s extremely upset and trying to hide it from the world. Only . . . he never, ever hides his feelings, whatever they are, from Dom. Never.  
  
But why shouldn’t he hide it, now? With Dom acting the way he is, why shouldn’t Art clam the fuck up, never to open again? He’s looking at  _five years_  in the pen, five years of fighting off every psycho looking to make a name for himself, or to turn the  _infamous_  Handsome Art into his bitch. All that to look forward to, and this is how his best friend is sending him off . . . with a homophobic, juvenile tirade.  
  
“I . . . fuck, Arthur, I am  _so_ , so sorry.”  
  
Art laughs bitterly; he’s still miserable about the face, but at least he’s  _readable_  again. “Yeah, whatever.”  
  
After a rather extended honk behind them, Dom steps on the gas once more. The Land Rover pulls forward into traffic smoothly. “No, I  _am_  sorry you felt you couldn’t come to me with . . . _this_.”  
  
“I'm just sorry I said anything at all.” He can feel Art’s gaze on him, then gone again. “I should've taken it to prison with me rather than wreck my last night of freedom.”  
  
Ouch.  
  
At the next street they come to, Dom changes lanes and signals their turn onto 23rd. There are, of course, no parking spaces, so he double parks next to a green Jetta. Outside, a woman dressed like a prostitute and walking a Lhasa Apso crosses in front of the Land Rover, pausing near the right bumper. Dom honks the horn once, sharply, and she moves on with a sneer.  
  
Shutting off the engine, he hopes the dog only  _pissed_  on the tire.  
  
“Look,  _I'm_  fucking sorry, Art, all right? I went a little over the top.”  _More than a little_ , Dom’s conscience informs him, and he grimaces, unbuckling his seatbelt so he can face his best friend. Art still looks listless, small, and like a kid. It’s eerie because Dom honestly hasn’t thought of him that way in  _years_. “It’s just . . . kind of a fucking surprise, Art. Kind of a broadside—but it's fine. Really. You being queer is . . . it’s totally fine.”   
  
“Nothing’s fine, Dom,” Art says, his voice choked and shaking. When he looks over at Dom, his eyes are shining and wet. “ _Five years_ , man. I don't know that I can handle that.”  
  
And he starts to cry. Not sob, or anything like that. Tears just roll down his face, and he looks away again, swiping at his cheeks irritably. “Fuck. Now I’m crying like a little bitch. Fag-Art, indeed.”  
  
Dom grimaces again and tells his conscience to shut the hell up. “I don't know what I was thinking, Art—saying those things. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being a queer, or a gay . . . or whatever it is you wanna call it. And hey, I mean, there's gonna be plenty of guys that like dick in the pen. You'll probably love it,” he jokes, only to receive a wordless, horrified stare in reply. Then Art looks straight ahead, out of the windshield, like he sees his future out there.  
  
And the future he sees sure as hell doesn’t look like sunny days and fields of daisies, either.  
  
“Okay, that was in poor taste, and I’m sorry,” Dom says contritely, wincing. “I’ll just say now, that if I’m being an asshole still, it’s just because I’m trying to get a handle on this whole gay-thing, not because I’m still angry. If you’ll forgive me my lapses into asshole-dom, I’ll forgive you for lying.”  
  
“Oh, God,  _you’re_  being forgiving? Now I  _know_  I’m fucked!” Art laughs sarcastically, leaning his head on the window. And Dom should be comforting him, should be clapping his shoulder, or even hugging him, but he can’t get it out of his mind that Art . . .  _wants_  him. Suddenly, he can’t stop trying to imagine what Art might want to do to or with him.  
  
Get blown? Probably. What guy doesn’t like getting head?  
  
Get fucked? Maybe. Though, if Dom is honest with himself, Art strikes him as more of a . . . a fuck- _er_  than a fuck _ee_.  
  
He shudders. Not that there’s anything wrong with . . .  _that_. It’s just not something Dom could imagine wanting to be done to him.  
  
But Art . . . Art’s going down for a five-stretch. That’s not nothing. He’s going to have to best ever bruiser in that place—every would-be badass that wants a piece of someone as pretty as Art. And he's going to have to keep doing it, probably every day he's in that awful place.  
  
Dom smirks a little meanly. Anyone that tries to fuck with Art, or put him in a situation is going to have a very nasty surprise coming. Art’s the sensitive sort, yes, but he’s also a stone-cold killer. Not that the  _System_  knows that, or Art’d be looking at life, not just a fiver.  
  
Although there’s nothing  _just_  about five-fucking-years for Dom’s screw-up . . . so on the eve of that, Art should get whatever it is he wants most, right? What. Fucking.  _Ever_.  
  
“What, uh—” Dom sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He can’t believe he’s about to do this, but he knows he’d feel five years worth of guilt if he didn’t at least put it out there. “What exactly is it that you, uh, that you wanna do to me, Arty?  
  
Art’s glances over at him, eyebrow quirked up wry and amused. Even those damned dimples make their first appearance in months. “You’re seriously asking me this  _now_?”  
  
“Well. . . .”  
  
Art rolls his eyes, but when he laughs this time, it’s a real one. “Alright, Dom. I wanna take you out to dinner. I wanna take you dancing at the poshest gay club in the city. I wanna take you to a fancy hotel and then I wanna  _take you_. That’s what I want.”  
  
Dom swallows and tries to smile, reminding himself:  _Five years, Dominic. Five years he’s doing for you and the Wild Bunch._  
  
He tilts his head and tries to look devil-may-care and not absolutely-freaked-the-fuck-out. He’s made up his mind, for good or ill, and there’s no use making them both any more miserable than they already are. Especially Art, especially on  _this_  night. “Well, Art, the good news is, I can definitely make two of those things happen for you. The bad news is . . . I’m not particularly hungry.”  
  
Art’s mouth drops open. Then closes. Then he shakes his head like a man trying to wake himself up with little or no success.  
  
“Seriously?” he asks, his voice gone up two octaves. When Dom nods, Art laughs, wild and a little unstable-sounding.  
  
“Seriously? Fuck, Dom!” He laughs again, running a hand over his gelled back hair. “This isn't happening.  _Fuck_!”  
  
“That  _is_ , indeed, on the table,” Dom agrees with what he hopes is equanimity. But Art gives him a  _look_. It says a thousand things, most of which Dom isn’t up to trying to interpret. The ones that stand out, however, are concern, doubt and, underneath everything else, desperate yearning.  
  
“You don’t have to do this, you know. Where I’m going . . . hell, I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna lack for a sex life, like you said. I mean, look at me. I’m Handsome Art,” Art jokes bleakly, making air quotes then hanging his head. “Jesus- _fuck_ , Dom . . . I can’t do this. I really, really can’t . . . you were right. I should’ve run away to some shithole banana republic with no extradition laws when I had the chance.”  
  
Dom says nothing. He’d offered to help Art do just that, months ago, before it’d been obvious the trial wasn’t going to go Art’s way. And maybe that’s why Art had turned him down.  
  
Or maybe it was this other  _thing_. The thing Art has for him.  
  
(“Would you be coming with me?” Art’d asked when Dom suggested fleeing the country. But he’d asked without much hope. He knew Dom had a good life here in the States—a  _newly regained_  life with his children, and he wasn’t about to upset their lives anymore than Mal’s death and Dom’s own troubles had already done.)  
  
Fresh guilt assails Dom, and he puts his hand on Art’s back tentatively. “It’ll be alright, Arty . . . somehow, some way, it’ll be alright.”  
  
“Yeah?” Art looks up at Dom, his eyes shining and unconvinced. “And how’s that, Dominic?”  
  
Dom has no answer because he doesn’t believe it, himself. And Art can read that on him, as plain as newsprint.  
  
“Fuck,” Art says, swiping at his eyes again. Then he surges forward with a growl, kissing Dom and pressing him half against the driver-side door, half against the driver’s seat. Startled, a gasp escapes Dom’s lips, only to be swallowed by Art.  
  
Art’s mouth is hot and wet; his tongue slides into Dom’s mouth, slick like a water-slide. He tastes like bubble-gum (his one nervous habit, chewing- and bubble-gum), stomach acid, and desperation. He moans low in his throat when Dom hesitantly returns the kiss, his hands clenching in Art’s lapels reflexively.  
  
Art breaks the kiss just when Dom thinks he might pass out from lack of oxygen. His eyes are bright and wild.  
  
“Holy  _fuck_ ,” he breathes huskily, grinning wide and reckless, like the Handsome Art everyone knows and loves. That  _Dom_  knows. And loves.  
  
Holding that thought in his mind, Dom tries his best to put his apprehension and reticence at rest. If it’s in his power, he plans to give Art the best night of his life. Or at least the best night he’ll have for the next five years.  
  
And maybe a little of that shows on Dom’s face, because that grin fades, replaced by the same shy, surprised smile young Arty Steiner had worn when he and Dom’d first met ten years ago.  
  
“C’mon, Dominic,” he says, bussing Dom’s lips lingeringly, then his cheek. His eyes are sparkling and very, very dark. “Take me dancing.”  
  



End file.
